Gay Dads Sue; Health Club Reverses Stand on Memberships

Support for Gay Dads on Change.org

A petition on Change.org has called on the owners of the club to allow same-sex families to get memberships. So far it has 40,000 signatures.

The petition author, 38-year-old Mark Lynn Ferguson of Washington, D.C., has never met the couple, but he said the story, "hit home for me on a lot of different levels."

"I am a Roanoke hometown native and the Appalachian south region is important to me," he said. 'I am also a gay guy. I felt I needed to do something to help? There's no room for this kind of discrimination."

Ferguson had seen publicity on the couple and set up the petition last week. "I had never done it before," he told ABCNews.com. "Our original goal was 10,000 signatures and we blew past that on day four or five."